More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on measures to combat substance abuse
The effectiveness of community corrections
How effective is incarceration as a rehabilitation tool
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Contemporary Corrections
Research through the years has provided an argument that a high incarceration rate has a positive impact on reducing crime. As an opposing argument, more contemporary studies suggest that the incarceration rate is not linked to the crime rate.
a. Explain the conundrum.
The United States has an enormous prison problem. The impact of incarceration on crime is inconsistent. The increase in incarceration does not help reduce the crime rate. Incarceration may account for a third of the decrease in crime rates but is not significant to be a contributing factor. Modern incarceration levels do little to deter crime while they do much to rip up families, increase racial disparities and destroy lives. District attorneys
…show more content…
and their assistants have gotten a lot more aggressive in bringing felony charges. This is what keep offenders in prison longer and contributes to mass incarceration. The economic and social impacts of this trend have been massive for mass incarceration and reduction in crime. Crime rates have gone down since 1980, but there are studies that have found the connection between increased prison rates and lower crime is tenuous and small. Efforts to implement criminal justice and federal sentencing reforms that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago have been gaining traction from both parties in Congress. This effort has formed a rare left-right coalition that is decidedly soft on crime which is different from the previous year mindset on “Tough on crime” motto. At the state level, tight budgets have forced governors and lawmakers to ease drug laws and relax harsh incarceration policies. This led the state to look for more cost-effective criminal justice solutions including investing in better drug treatment and parole programs. b. How can these opposing arguments prevail in our discipline? Incarceration is not the only punishment that may reduce crime rates. There are other types of punishment including fines, probation, community service, drug treatment and other sanctions are not considered in crime control studies. The crime rate in the United States fell dramatically between 1999 and 2005 and has been steadily decreasing since. The growth of the penal system and high rates of incarceration did not occur by accident. The shift in criminal justice practices, policies, and laws in the 1970s resulted in high incarceration rates was distinctive. Since the 1940s public officials and policy makers from all levels of government; increasingly sought to make changes in judicial, policing, and prosecutorial behavior and in criminal justice policy and legislation. These changes ultimately resulted in major increases in the government’s capacity to pursue and punish lawbreakers. This in the 1970s, led to an escalation of sanctions for a wide range of crimes. Furthermore, criminal justice became a persistent rather than an intermittent issue in U.S. politics. c. What is your opinion on this topic; does more incarceration of criminals reduce the crime rate? The increase in incarceration does not reduce the crime rate. The length of sentencing can also have a direct effect on crime rates. Lengthy sentences typically lead to overcrowding, which means less access to rehabilitative programs and a greater chance that mental health issues will exacerbated. The popular explanation for how we got here, however, seems to be largely wrong, and most of the policy responses flowing from it may therefore be inappropriate. We’re always going to have prisons and crime, but local, state, and federal government should rethink their drug policies and sentencing laws to attempt to reduce the mass incarceration rate. Research Methods Validity is an important concept in criminal justice research. External validity (generalizability) and internal validity, with all its threats, challenge the accuracy of the results of research. Explain both external and internal validity including how they can affect the results of a study and describe some methods to achieve a high level of validity. Internal validity is affected by flaws within the study itself such as not controlling some of the major variables such as a design problem or problems with the research instrument as data collection. The factors that would affect internal validity are subject variability, size of subject population, time given for data collection, history, attrition, maturation and task sensitivity. History can be a factor because studies that take repeated measures on subjects over time are more likely to be affected by history. Maturation changes may occur because of the normal passage of time. The more time that passes in a study the more likely subjects are to become tired, less motivated and bored of the study. Instrumentation may affect validity because changes that occur due to changes in the assessment of the dependent variable. Changing the measurement methods during the study affects what is measured. Statistical regression can affect validity by the lowering of extreme high scores and the raising of extreme low scores. The retesting of the subjects will almost always produce a different distribution of scores. Selection of participants for various treatment group is made based on difference criteria that affects validity. Subjects in comparison groups should be equivalent at the beginning of a study. Mortality affects validity due to the loss of participants from various treatment groups. Experimentation mortality can affect the study because subjects do not complete the study. The observed difference between groups that have a high mortality rate would be questionable. External validity is the extent to which you can generalize your findings to a larger group or other contexts. If the research lacks external validity, the finding cannot be applied to contexts other than the one in which you carried out your research. There are several factors that can affect external validity. Those factors are population characteristics, interaction of subject selection and research, descriptive explicitness of the independent variable, effect of the research environment, experimenter effects, data collection methodology and effect of time. Interaction between how the subjects and the treatment can occur. Subjects not randomly selected from the population may lead to some bias in the study. Pretesting subjects in a study may affect validity by causing the subjects to react differently to the treatment that was different from the pretest. Experimental setting can affect the validity by how the subjects perform or react to a certain situation. There are two methods to achieve validity with a research study. One of the methods would be to do randomization. Randomization in studies is critical to ensuring the validity of research. Randomized is generally assign to groups of randomly chosen individuals to either receive a treatment or to receive a placebo. The second method to ensure validity would be to use sample size. A sample of the population would be used and the data would then be analyzed to draw conclusion for the whole population. Criminal Justice Policy, Process and Administration Explain the current posture of drug enforcement and identify the approaches least likely to be sustainable and/or successful. Also, discuss the intersection between treatment and enforcement within the context of drug policy. The current drug enforcement policy goes over two postures. The first posture is to reduce drunkenness. Preventing people who commit crimes under the influence will reduce crime if there is increased taxation for alcohol. The second posture is to reduce the volume of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. This would be handled by making treatment more available and using crime control strategies. There were several approaches to changing and adapting drug laws.
The first change to the drug laws was to legalize marijuana. This drug law policy believes that marijuana should be considered on the same level as alcohol; the illegal market for this drug would be completely abolished. The drug enforcement resources and incarceration due to marijuana would also be abolished as well. Marijuana is not as expensive as the other drugs that would be considered as economic-compulsive crime. The availability of this drug may influence crime for other drugs. Marijuana legalization would tend to have modest effects on crime. It would eliminate more than half of the drug rates. Decriminalization would also reduce the number of arrests but in turn would increase the market for cannabis. The expansion would be substantial for the level of crimes that are not drug related. The second change to the drug laws was legalizing PCP. The legalization of PCP would most likely increase crime. This change to this drug law was not sustainable. Legalizing PCP did not eliminate much illicit-market crime and it limited law enforcement resources. There would also be a small increase in crime related intoxication and addiction. This would make PCP legalization a net crime legalization. Since it is only a small contributor to crime; legalizing PCP to control crime would not be a huge factor in drug laws. This approach would not be sustainable to drug enforcement. The third change to drug laws was legalizing cocaine. Cocaine trafficking and consumption caused a huge amount of crime and used majority of law enforcement resources. Crimes associated with cocaine use and the long-term effects of addiction would presumably increase. Smaller illicit market revenues would translate into less market crime. The shrinking of illicit business would increase the job market participation in high crime neighborhoods and decrease the number of offenders with prison weapons and prohibited
weapons. Another good use of this illicit job market would free up 20% nations’ law enforcement, prosecution, and correction resources. Crime related outcomes are no the only relevant issue when considering cocaine legalization. Chronic heavy cocaine use can cause intense emotional pain for the user and those surrounding victims. The number of victims would increase from just the victims coming from cocaine abuse disorders. This approach for this drug law change would probably be unsuccessful. The last change to drug laws would be controlling alcohol supply demand. The policies that want to be placed would be raising the price of alcohol would reduce crime. This policy would attempt to cover the costs that drinkers would impose on others. Smaller increases would have an impact of alcohol use. Another policy would be to reduce the availability of alcohol. This policy would most certainly be crime reducing and perhaps substantially impact deterrence and incapacitation. Crime minimizing of drug control resources would provide more treatment and somewhat less enforcement. Drug treatment is crime reducing and treatment is more cost effective than enforcement. Law enforcement can both increase and decrease non-drug crime. The incarceration of drug offenders will prevent crimes for which they have committed. Drug enforcement increase the total number of people who serve time in prison. Prison tends to increase future non-drug related criminal activity which cause drug related incarceration to increase crime.
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
9. Sherman L., Gottfredson D., MacKenzie D., Eck J., Reuter P., Bushway S. Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. A Report to the United States Congress. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1997.
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the year 1980 we had approximately 501,900 persons incarcerated across the United States. By the year 2000, that figure has jumped to over 2,014,000 prisoners. The current level of incarceration represents the continuation of a 25-year escalation of the nation's prison and jail population beginning in 1973. Currently the U.S. rate of 672 per 100,000 is second only to Russia, and represents a level of incarceration that is 6-10 times that of most industrialized nations. The rise in prison population in recent years is particularly remarkable given that crime rates have been falling nationally since 1992. With less crime, one might assume that fewer people would be sentenced to prison. This trend has been overridden by the increasing impact of lengthy mandatory sentencing policies.
There has been a longstanding debate over the effectiveness of correlational institutions. Some argue that incarceration change offenders while others argue that being incarcerated causes people to continue committing crimes. Resolving this issue is mostly important for young individuals because they are more likely to commit crimes than older folks. Using PubMed and ProQuest, I looked at studies that relate to the topic discussed above that have been conducted in the United States and around the world. This paper focuses on how incarceration affects people and how to reduce it. Keywords such “how to reduce incarceration”, “effectiveness of incarceration” were used to find articles that were directly related to the topic. Prospective
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
With the substantial increase in prison population and various changes that plague correctional institutions, government agencies are finding that what was once considered a difficult task to provide educational programs, inmate security and rehabilitation programs are now impossible to accomplish. From state to state, each correctional organization is coupled with financial problems that have depleted the resources to assist in providing the quality of care in which the judicial system demands from these state and federal prisons. Judges, victims, and prosecuting attorneys entrust that once an offender is turned over to the correctional system, that the offender will receive the punishment imposed by the court, be given services that aid in the rehabilitation of those offenders that one day will be released back into society, and to act as a deterrent to other criminals contemplating criminal acts that could result in their incarceration. Has our nation’s correctional system finally reached it’s critical collapse, and as a result placed American citizens in harm’s way to what could result in a plethora of early releases of inmates to reduce the large prison populations in which independent facilities are no longer able to manage? Could these problems ultimately result in a drastic increase in person and property crimes in which even our own law enforcement is ineffective in controlling these colossal increases in crime against society?
In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the nation, sky-rocketed to 708 percent between 1972 and 2008. Today, there are about 145,000 inmates occupying areas only designed for 80,000 (Posner). Peter Mosko, “an assistant professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice” (Frazier) stated, “America, with 2.3 million people behind bars, has more prisoners than soldiers” (Frazier). There have been studies that have shown “there are more men and women in prison than ever before. The number of inmates grew by an average of 1,600 a week. The U. S. has the highest rate of crime in the world” (Clark). Because of this influx in inmates, many prisoners’ rights groups have filed lawsuits charging that “overcrowded prisons violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment” (Clark). It is clear that the United States corrections system needs to be reformed in order to eliminate this problem. Prison overcrowding is a serious issue in society due to the fact it affects prison ...
...llegalized for a long time without any evidence of success. The drug has become purer, more available, and cheap in the recent past. Demand and supply for marijuana has increased despite the harsh policies and the war on drugs. Legalizing marijuana will reduce the boom in the black market and reduce crime, corruption, and violence associated with drug cartels. Millions of dollars used for incarceration will be redirected to rehabilitation, which will reduce dependence, especially among younger users. Legalization will allow users of marijuana to buy from legal and safe sources. The war on drugs has been ineffective in reducing drug use despite spending a lot of money on incarcerations. Mass incarceration in the drug war has had negative effects on the society because most imprisoned individuals are non-violent offenders who pose no legitimate threat to the community.
All over America, crime is on the rise. Every day, every minute, and even every second someone will commit a crime. Now, I invite you to consider that a crime is taking place as you read this paper. "The fraction of the population in the State and Federal prison has increased in every single year for the last 34 years and the rate for imprisonment today is now five times higher than in 1972"(Russell, 2009). Considering that rate along crime is a serious act. These crimes range from robbery, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, abuse, trafficking, assault, and murder. Crime is a major social problem in the United States. While the correctional system was designed to protect society from offenders it also serves two specific functions. First it can serve as a tool for punishing the offender. This involves making the offender pay for his/her crime while serving time in a correctional facility. On the other hand it can serve as a place to rehabilitate the offender as preparation to be successful as they renter society. The U.S correctional system is a quite controversial subject that leads to questions such as how does our correctional system punish offenders? How does our correctional system rehabilitate offenders? Which method is more effective in reducing crime punishment or rehabilitation? Our correctional system has several ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders.
In this article, Rose and Clear base their research upon a unique proposition that incarcerating individuals can have both a positive and negative effect on their communities from which they were removed. More specifically, they argue that overdependence on incarceration as a formal control—that which originates from the state—may actually reduce communities’ capacity to develop informal controls locally, thereby increasing these communities’ susceptibility to social disorganization. In reviewing previous literature, the researchers discover that many studies do not report on what negative consequences public or state controls can have on neighborhoods. They posit that not only can such controls devastate the neighborhood’s organization, but
Although violent crime fell and poverty was on the rise a few key distinctions must be made here. Firstly, the result of the United States having the highest prison population in the world can be partly attributed to crime rising dramatically in the past 40 years (NeyFakh 1). Now, the Bureau of Justice reports that prison population fell 1% at the end of 2014 with its population at its smallest since 2005. This is the largest decline in more than 35 years (BJS 1). However, John Pfaff argues that even though we are having fewer arrests we are actually putting more people in prison. As mentioned, even though crime has fallen more people are put in prison even though arrests are low. Also, statistically speaking, it is very difficult to compute
Leading to an increase in drug experimentation by the youth and an increase in crack houses, where most laced drugs are produced. There is a reason why these drugs are illegal and it 's because of their harmful effects and the damage they cause the human body. Drug users, are often recognized as people who commit crimes, murder, rape, and other violence including burglary. With drug laws, it creates a fear in people of getting in trouble with the law and is a major reason to not use drugs. The legalization of drugs would not lower crimes rates as there would be more and more addicts as well as large black markets for drugs. Although these drug users commit crimes to obtain these drugs, it is obvious to see they would still be committing these crimes to obtain the drug even if it is legalized. Either way, a crime is still being committed they just have an easier way to steal the drug from someone. Which means the crime rates would start to rise, leading to the population of prisoners increasing, which also leads to the government spending more money on organizing jail facilities to hold these prisoners. One state in particular where marijuana is now legal, has started to come to the realization that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to leaglize this drug. Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Florida and President of SAM points out that,